Good morning. Here’s The Daily Situational Awareness Brief for Friday, 25 June 2001. You can receive this brief via email by signing up at https://forwardobserver.com/daily-sa
PORTS: The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports have been under sustained backlogs for the past ten months. In May, LA became the first port in the western hemisphere to process over a million twenty-foot containers in a single month. Three more shipping companies announced their intent to bring services to the LA port which will exacerbate delays. Port capacity is not the looming issue despite Yantian’s reopening this week. Instead, some Asian-owned carriers are refusing contracts in interior US cities like Dallas, Chicago, Indianapolis and Minneapolis due to unreliable transport trucks, reducing container availability. The LA port’s executive director said, “It’s kind of going to be a rolling blackout over the course of the next months, where certain ramps are going to be shut down from an IPI (industrial production index) perspective, and certain ramps will place moratoriums on any more inbound containers.” – D.M.
JAN 6: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formation of a select committee to investigate the Capitol Protest on January 6th. Since the House was unable to form a bipartisan investigatory body, the credibility of the committee will be questioned. The political play is to drag this out until the midterms. Pelosi said that the timeline “will be as long as it takes for them — the time they need to do the investigation of the causes of this.” The focus of the eventual report is expected to be focused on domestic threats and improving Capitol security. – D.M.
NATO: During the multinational exercise Formidable Shield 21, US and Dutch Navy ships worked together to intercept a ballistic missile. This marks the first time a non-US radar system was integrated in the “missile kill chain.” The director of the Missile Defense Agency said this capability will be critical in ensuring survivability in a common defense scenario, such as a war with Russia or China. In addition to satellite-enabled missile interdiction, U.S. defense officials have testified to the development of ground-based secondary systems for when (not if) space becomes a contested domain. – D.M.
GAZPROM: The Russian-owned gas company Gazprom is limiting supplies to the EU. As regulators negotiate final terms for the NordStream 2 pipeline, the energy situation in Europe could change quickly. Gazprom is not making Ukrainian transport capacity bookings at a sustainable level and has been injecting minimal amounts into its own European storage space. The reduced flow means many European countries will not have adequate stores for the winter, giving Russia significant leverage over policy. – D.M.
In today’s Early Warning brief, we discuss Antifa resuming violent attacks in Portland, and a look ahead to this weekend’s protests and likely rioting. You can get our full Early Warning briefing by becoming a subscriber here: https://forwardobserver.com/early-warning